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Moshe Waldoks
Born	(1949-07-17)July 17, 1949 (age 76) Toledo, Ohio, United States
Education	New York University Hebrew University Brandeis University

Moshe Waldoks is an Americanrabbi who co-edited The Big Book ofJewish Humor.^[1]

Waldoks was born on July 17, 1949, inToledo, Ohio toHolocaust survivors who arrived from displaced person's camps surroundingMunich two weeks earlier. His father Yidel, a native of theVohlynia, Western Ukraine city ofLutzk and its environs, was a sole survivor of a large nuclear and extended family. Yidel's wife and daughter perished in the wake of theEinsatzgruppen, the Nazi mobile killing units that entered Poland in 1941. His mother, Bronia Lipnicka, was fromSosnowitz in Upper Silesia that was annexed into the Reich immediately after the invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939. She, her mother and one sister survived a large nuclear and extended family in a Nazi labor camp in Czechoslovakia. Waldoks was raised in aYiddish speaking home and was enrolled in Yiddish speaking yeshivot (parochial schools) for his primary and part of his early high school education - Yeshiva of Eastern Parkway and BTA, Brooklyn Talmudical Academy, a high school associated withYeshiva University.

Waldoks is married to Anne Pomerantz Waldoks, a clinical psychologist, and is the father of 3 daughters.

Waldoks attended the Washington Square campus ofNYU from 1966 to 1968 and then completed undergraduate studies at theHebrew University in Jerusalem, where he studied The History of Jewish Thought. In 1971, he entered into a doctoral program atBrandeis University in the department of Near East and Jewish studies. He completed his doctorate in 1984, with a dissertation onHillel Zeitlin, a Warsaw-based Yiddish journalist, Hebrew writer and mystic who was murdered by the Nazis in 1942.

Upon his arrival in Boston in 1971, Waldoks became engaged in community activism and served on numerous boards of Jewish organizations. He was on the executive committee of the Jewish Community Relations Council for 17 years. From 1974 to 1977, while a graduate student, Waldoks helped establish a full time position asHillel Director atTufts University. From 1979 to 1986, he taught Jewish studies atClark University inWorcester, MA and served in many adjunct positions at Colleges and Universities in the Boston area.

In 1981 he, along with-co-editorWilliam Novak, published THE BIG BOOK OF JEWISH HUMOR (HarperCollins). A 25th anniversary edition with additional material was published in 2006. In 1994, Waldoks co-edited the Best of American Humor (Simon & Schuster).^[2] From 1982 to 1990, Waldoks produced close to two hundred cable television programs for the then early pre-internet years of community cable stations. This series named Aleph was the first Jewish television show in the Boston area. From 1986 to 1998, Waldoks traveled and performed as a stand-up comedian, storyteller, philosopher and sage for over 100 communities in the United States and Canada. He also performed at National conferences and many fundraising events.

Since 1974, Waldoks has been heavily involved ininterfaith relations. First with theChristian, particularly theCatholic, community; later theTibetan-Buddhist community, and in recent years with theMuslim community. In 1985, Waldoks visited the former Soviet Union to connect with Jewish "refusniks" who were held back from leaving the country for a variety of reasons, security and otherwise. In 1988, he participated in the Polish Bishops Conference in Tinietz, a monastery located in aKrakow suburb. This trip, sponsored by theADL, was a groundbreaking opportunity to assess the situation of Jewish-Catholic relations inPoland that had hardly been influenced by theVatican II encyclicals Nostra Aetate of 1965, whenPope John XXIII provided the most inclusive statement of the Church and the Jews. In 1989 and 1990 Waldoks was instrumental in helping to convene the first Jewish-Tibetan Dialogue with theDalai Lama, first in the New York area and in the following year at the seat of theTibetan government in Exile inDharamsala, India.^[3] In 1999, Waldoks participated as one of the Jewish leaders in a Catholic-Jewish pilgrimage toIsrael andRome sponsored by the New England Region of the Anti-Defamation League.

In 1996, Waldoks was ordained as a non-denominationalRabbi by his mentors RabbisZalman- Schachter-Shalomi,Everett Gendler, andArthur Green.^[4] In 1998, he took on the transformation of a moribund synagogue, Temple Beth Zion, inBrookline, Massachusetts and was successful over the next 21 years in creating a community rebranded as TBZ, of which he became founding rabbi, serving on a part-time basis.^[5]

In 2008 Waldoks was named byNewsweek magazine as one of the top 25 pulpit rabbis in the United States.^[6]

• Living people
• 1949 births
• 21st-century American rabbis

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